2.15 Solomon Grundy and the Seven Ages of Man

Death in Poetry. For children.

Still Life With a skull (Vanitas) 1646, attributed to Philippe de Champaigne.

Nursery rhymes are weird things. When I think about the ones that I knew as a little child, back in the 1960s, It amazes me. We all knew them, lots of them. Jack and Jill, Ring a Ring o’ Roses, Humpty Dumpty. Many of them have been around for hundreds of years, dating from far in the past and many of them having a number of theories about where they originate from. Does Ring a Ring o’ Roses really come from the Plague? (Probably not). Was Jack and Jill originally about the French King, Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, who both lost their crowns when they were beheaded by guillotine in 1793, or does the rhyme date even further back, to a 12th or 13th Century Icelandic tale in which a couple called Juki and Bil were caught stealing a bucket of water and exiled to the moon? And was Humpty Dumpty based on the death of Cardinal Wolsey or Richard the Third, or was it a cannon that fell off the city wall at colchester in 1648?

The shocking thing about all of these pieces and many more nursery rhymes is their connection to death. Perhaps in days gone by, people were much more familiar with death, and much more open with talking about it to the young children that they bounced up and down on their knees. I can’t imagine jolly little death themed songs being quite as popular with modern parents. But then perhaps nursery rhymes have been in steady decline since the 1960s with the advent of more readily accessible kids entertainment through the rise of television and more recently YouTube, which features the terrible Cocomelon, one of the most successful kid’s channels ever on the platform, and one that can now be found on both Netflix and the BBC. Cocomelon actually uses the tunes associated with many old nursery rhymes, but regularly changes most of their lyrics beyond recognition and glosses over everything with a twee and artless American family values orientated style. If you must use YouTube to introduce your kids to songs and rhymes, may I suggest the far superior SuperSimple Songs instead? Its still American, but has a much funnier, jollier and traditional feel about it.

Neither Cocomelon nor Super Simple songs deal with death in an way shape or form. Not like Solomon Grundy, many online versions manage to avoid the topic of death by talking about him finishing work on a Saturday and having a picnic on a Sunday, although there is a version by the internationally famous Australian kids music group The Wiggles. I myself can clearly remember being quite disturbed by what was my first encounter with the concept of the cold hand of death through this nursery rhyme, which I first encountered in a picture book book probably from Woolworths.

Solomon Grundy

Solomon Grundy
Born on a Monday,
Christened on a Tuesday,
Married on a Wednesday,
Sick on a Thursday,
Worse on a Friday,
Died on a Saturday,
Buried on a Sunday,
And that was the end of Solomon Grundy.

That was a real shocker, although it probably gave me some sort of frame of reference for understanding what was going on when an elderly neighbour (who I knew as Auntie Ethel) was taken out of her house in a wooden box. “She had had a good innings,” as my dad remarked at the time.

It is said that the main idea behind the piece was not to familiarise children with the concept of death at all, but just to help them to learn the order of the days of the week. Whoever first put the rhyme together couldn’t think of a better way to do it than to conjure up the image of someone rapidly moving from cradle to grave over a period of seven days.

Perhaps they got the idea from Tom of Islington. Who, like Solomon, appeared in Mother Goose’s rhymes during the 19th century

Tom, Tom of Islington

Tom, Tom Of Islington
Married a wife on Sunday
Brought her home on Monday
Hired a house on Tuesday
Fed her well on Wednesday
Sick was she on Thursday
Dead was she on Friday
Sad was he on Saturday
To bury his wife on Sunday. 

At least Tom lived to tell the tale, unlike poor Solomon. There seems something a little suspicious about his story though. Perhaps he is based on Thomas Cabbage Cooke, an 18th century Islington miser, who died with a fortune worth millions of pounds in today’s money stuffed under his bed. He came into his fortune by blackmailing a rich widow into marrying him. I’m not sure how long the (unhappy) marriage lasted, but presumably it was more than a week.

The story of Solomon Grundy has been linked to Shakespeare’s famous All the world’s a stage monologue with its seven ages of man.

From As You Like It by William Shakespeare

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything

Since first being introduced to this at school, I have watched myself progress along its path. I am not exactly sure where I am at the moment, but I am probably transitioning between the fifth and sixth ages, imagining myself to be full of wise saws and modern instances in writing like this, but often to be caught writing it in my slippers and pyjamas. These characteristics probably equate to Friday and Saturday in Grundy days. Sunday, with its second childishness and mere oblivion can’t be too far away now. How cheerful I am, having been raised on death obsessed nursery rhymes.

The link between Grundy and Shakespeare was set out very clearly in Mother Goose for Grown Folks (1859), by Mrs ADT Whitney.

Whitney (1824-1906) was a popular American poet and writer of girls fiction, including titles such as The Gayworthies (1865), and Patience Strong’s Outings (1868). It was from the latter title that another popular poet, Winifred Emma May (1907 - 1990) took her nom de plume - Patience Strong

Solomon Grundy - by Adeline Dutton Train Whitney

"Solomon Grundy
Born on Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Sick on Thursday,
Worse on Friday,
Dead on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday,
This was the end of Solomon Grundy."

So sings the unpretentious Muse
That guides the quill of Mother Goose,
And in one week of mortal strife
Presents the epitome of Life:
But down sits Billy Shakespeare next,
And, coolly taking up the text,
His thought pursues the trail of mine,
And, lo! the "Seven Ages" shine!
O world! O critics! can't you see
How Shakespeare plagiarizes me?

And other bards will after come, 
To echo in a later age,
"He lived, -- he died: behold the sum,
The abstract of the historian's page”;
 --Yet once for all the thing was done, 
Complete in Grundy's pilgrimage.

For not a child upon the knee
But hath the moral learned of me;
And measured, in a seven days' span,
The whole experience of man.